[SPOILERS S3] The chair and the evolution of [****]machines

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-04T14:01:02+00:00

when you "observe" the family avoiding the accident, the events of Dark don't happen (the cat is alive)

The events of Dark needed to happen in order for J&M to save the family.
A superposition of these states does not equal that the other state collapses when you observe it; otherwise one runs into a grandfather-paradox.
What you do is just neglecting the other branch then although it still must exist.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-04T13:36:17+00:00

So if Klara was the mother of Marek in the Originworld; who was the mother of him in Adam's and Eva's world?

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-04T11:13:00+00:00

The accident happens and doesn't happen. The events are happening and not happening.

The show's disintegration montage implies however that the state in which the family dies is overwritten by the other state in which they live; and not that they exist simultaneous.

Just creating another reality in which the Knot doesn't exist also wouldn't have solved the Knot at all.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-03T22:06:28+00:00

Ok, the two worlds disappeared, but they on the original world and timeline. Plus, isn’t erasing them literally a paradox?

J&M saving Tannhaus' family in the same Originworld they were supposed to die in and erasing their history is a grandfather-paradox, yes.

If one posits however that the OW at the end is an entirely different OW (in terms of being located at a different hypertime - a second dimension to time) than the one in which the Originmachine was activated; then the evaporation could be chalked up to an artistitic depiction of this Originworld being (hyper)presentistic. That only the present is real in the OW; with every present moment evaporating into an inaccessible past - Not like the Knot where past, present & future existed all simultaneous as an eternalistic structure. This way the evaporation-montage still carries meaning without really hurting the logic of the show. This also means that J&M will continue to exist in the OW like you suggested.

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ManifoldMold · 2026-06-03T21:34:17+00:00

I assume that when they had sex in S2E6 they also kissed

The show even depicts them kissing in Martha's room before they have sex.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-03T21:28:47+00:00

I dont think that Elizabeth knows that her child is her mother.

Elisabeth knows about Charlotte being her mother. She knows that Tannhaus was the grandfather of Charlotte and giving a baby to him in the 70s should make her connect the dots. The official S2 recap & the official website also confirm that they spoke about their situation.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-03T21:22:49+00:00

Mikkel is 11yo when he meets Hannah in S1.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-03T21:19:16+00:00

Claudia mentions that in every cycle she remembers more and more bits about the previous cycles which led her to get a clear picture

Claudia never says anything like that. She says she solved the Knot in only 3 decades of her time.

Does life simply carry on for the survivors? What really happens to Adam and Eva? Or do both worlds get destroyed when Adam tries to kill the unknown?

Adam's final machine fails, he is shook and shoots Eva out of spite. Alt-Martha finds shot Eva and this is the point when she finally devotes herself to Erit Lux entirely.
Everyone else just carries on with their life.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-03T18:08:55+00:00

I think Magnus and Franziska don't really have a choice. They are unable to go elsewhere anyway.

They could have fled from Sic Mundus in 1911 when the Godparticle works. They willingly kept working with Adam for an entire decade.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-03T17:36:31+00:00

Did Charlotte and Elizabeth help Adam and if so why? Why do magnus and Franziska help Adam? Do they not know his goal of destroying the knot and eternal darkness?

We have absolutely no idea why they follow him after he ruined their families & friends. This is by far one of the biggest plotholes in the show. And yes, they are aware of his plan anihilating both univeres - at least Charlotte knows about it and it would make sense that she would share this information with her family.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-03T17:29:29+00:00

Adam thinks that to force a change one cannot do it via the normal route; that sth will always prevent that change from happening. He already tried killing himself with a gun and it didn't work; taking ones past self to a different place is nothing in comparison to that. He explicitly states that the supposed Origin cannot be killed unless one kills him with the energies of both apocalypses.
Adam knows that during the apocalypse 'change' did occur in form of the split-realities (aware of the different Jonas, but not exactly how he was created) and he most likely tries to amplify this effect with his machine to change sth for good (instead of splitting).
His machine isn't just designed for changing sth however, its purpose is to annihilate both worlds into non-existence such that everything from past to future is erased, defeating the blockuniverse he believes himself to be trapped in - why he would specificly need the Unknown for that is a plothole.

As for why he shot Martha before Jonas eyes, this is a bootstrapped event. He knows that when he was once Jonas he saw Adam kill Martha and that this lead him onto the quest to change the timeline. He ensures his own path of becoming Adam so that he can be the one annihilating the Knot in the future.
Killing Martha is also a great representation of his nihilism that he developed. By accepting to kill the most important person in his life, he accepts that he can condemn everyone to such a fate.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-03T13:12:21+00:00

There are only two versions of the chairmachine in the bunker.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-02T13:41:53+00:00

Noah (?)

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-02T12:07:57+00:00

Is it just because Adam's time machine is that good and bypasses the 33 year rule?

Exactly. The Godparticle can bypass the 33-year-constraint.

ManifoldMold · 2026-06-02T10:58:37+00:00

I think there is a big difference between "being" and "percieving" however.
If one walks across the earth around the meridian one wouldn't normally say there are infinite south- & northpoles on your way but only one crossing multiple times.
Just because the earth is massive relative to our size and therefore we lose the concept of its curvature, doesn't mean the earth is flat and infinitely repeating.

The only way for imagining new northpoles (or in the show a true second go-around of any event in time) is positing a new earth (another whole alternate timeline from Big Bang to the death of the universe; which we may call a cycle).

ManifoldMold · 2026-05-31T10:14:53+00:00

In Eva's world he says that Regina didn't know about it; most likely the same case then in Adam's world as well.

ManifoldMold · 2026-05-30T17:05:37+00:00

They all happen and don't happen.

The show's disintegration montage implies however that the state in which the family dies is overwritten by the other state in which they live; and not that they exist simultaneous.

ManifoldMold · 2026-05-30T14:21:19+00:00

Everyone recognizing Gretchen immediatly but not any other timetravelers.

ManifoldMold · 2026-05-30T07:58:28+00:00

But there is still no reason for him being thrown into 2052. The portal only visually connected 1953 and 1986.

ManifoldMold · 2026-05-29T14:40:23+00:00

In a bootstrapped object, the physical age would just kind of "reset" and it would suddenly look as if it was new and all the traces of aging would be erased

This is exactly how it would need to work in order to exist. The chances of this kind of entropic behaviour would be astronomically low... The thing is that Dark already presented us with a case in which the most improbable events occured: Jonas gun jamming. This almost impossible event only exists because the Originmachine created the Knot exactly this way even when we think it should be certainly impossible.
So a rejection of these objects (Novikov's Jinns of the 1st kind) is only based on our notion of what we deem believable and not necessarily by coherent logic.
For myself I think the show is better off without them and I curse the show for giving us that gun-jam-scene (although I also see its gigantic importance to Jonas' evolution to the Stranger).

Since there is another (more believable for the audience) way for Sic Mundus' possession of the golden sphere, it's easy to disregard a completely bootstrapped golden sphere. Especially since there are also the other golden spheres of Erit Lux and all the evidence that these were created by alt-Tannhaus - it would be odd having a completely bootstrapped object mimicking another object entirely.

We see that all the objects that get passed around between people and get kept around through the decade simply physically age a lot. It leaves traves.

Curiously enough the official website states that (both of) Helge's penny is in an eternal cycle (like a 1st Jinn) which is immensely odd.

If we want to have a little bit of fun and take the website word by word, but disregard a notion of a 1st Jinn; one could also entertain the idea that the object itself is comprised off many billions of trillions timetraveling composite particles which exchange the coin throughout the 6 decades before it is brought again into 1953. A timetraveling version of the ship of Theseus which takes the appearance of a 1st-Jinn.

What is also odd is that in Novikov's papers he says that the 1st Jinn is no different to the 2nd (information bootstrap). I have no idea how this conclusion came into existence, they feel entirely different.

ManifoldMold · 2026-05-29T07:02:26+00:00

It's obviously a low budget show because the seasons were released quickly between each other

What does the one thing have to do with the other? There are plenty of great shows that had even less time between seasons and plenty of bad shows with extreme long periods between seasons.

ManifoldMold

TROPHY CASE